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Faced with loosing control of congress, Cheney and his pack of radical conservatives have sunk to an all-time low. According to his statements on Fox News (imagine that) insurgents are stepping up their violence in Iraq with the hopes that we will vote the Republicans out of office.

Cheney: “Whether it’s al Qaeda or the other elements that are active in Iraq, they are betting on the proposition they can break the will of the American people. They’re very sensitive to the fact that we’ve got an election scheduled.”

Why didn’t he just buy some TV time and come on with a grim face and say “The terrorists WANT you to vote Democrat!” I have to say that it’s pretty sad to see our leaders stooping to such infantile tactics. The only thing the Republicans have to run on is fear, and because it’s not working anymore they just sink lower and lower in an effort to scare us into thinking we need them. Sorry pal. It looks like America has had it with your fear mongering. Your days of power are just about up.

I’ve been saying it for several weeks now, so I was glad to finally see Time Magazine come out with an article giving DNC Chairman Howard Dean credit for masterminding the political tactics that have many republicans fighting for their political lives in their once solid-red states.

Dean has always advocated a fifty-state policy when it comes to funding democratic campaigns. Believing that no republican in any race should ever go unchallenged, he has often sparked controversy from individuals like llinois Representative Rahm Emanuel who believe the DNC’s funds are better spent in the traditional battleground states like Ohio than in solidly crimson states such as Mississippi. Dean, on the other hand, argues that if the Democrats want to win presidential elections, they need to spend to build strong state parties across the country rather than pump all their cash into swing states.

Well, it looks like we can chalk one up for Howard Dean on this one. Emanuel, and his vocal band of contrarians have had to bite their collective tongue as poll after poll show Democratic candidates pulling ahead in states that were once considered safe republican strongholds. Thanks to Howard Dean and his calm, rational thought in the face of short-sighted, obtuse criticism, Democrats look more and more likely each day to capture not only the House of Representatives, but the Senate as well.

Everyone knows that George W. Bush is a blithering idiot, but now we finally have some data, albeit fake, to back it up.

Apparently the Lovenstein Institute (does not actually exist) has been tracking presidential I.Q. for some time and George W. Bush is right where he belongs at the bottom of the barrel. Coming in at 91, he’s just slightly dumber than his father who managed to come out some seven points ahead of him at 98.

It turns out that this is a hoax, but it makes for a pretty funny story anyhow…

Since 1973, the Lovenstein Institute has published its research to the educational community on each new president, which includes the famous “IQ” report among others. There have been twelve presidents over the past 50 years, from F.D. Roosevelt to G.W. Bush, who were rated based on scholarly achievements, writings that they produced without aid of staff, their ability to speak with clarity, and several other psychological factors, which were then scored using the Swanson/Crain system of intelligence ranking.

The study determined the following IQs of each president as accurate to within five percentage points:

The six Republican presidents of the past 50 years had an average IQ of 115.5, with President Nixon having the highest at 155. President G.W. Bush rated the lowest of all the Republicans with an IQ of 91. The six Democrat presidents had IQs with an average of 156, with President Clinton having the highest IQ, at 182. President Lyndon B. Johnson was rated the lowest of all the Democrats with an IQ of 126. No president other than Carter (D) has released his actual IQ, 176 (rated as 175 by the Lovenstein Institute).

Among comments made concerning the specific testing of President GW Bush, his low ratings are due to his apparently difficult command of the English language in public statements, his limited use of vocabulary (6,500 words for Bush versus an average of 11,000 words for other presidents), his lack of scholarly achievements other than a basic MBA, and an absence of any body of work which could be studied on an intellectual basis. The complete report documents the methods and procedures used to arrive at these ratings, including depth of sentence structure and voice stress confidence analysis. “All the Presidents prior to George W. Bush had a least one book under their belt, and most had written several white papers during their education or early careers. Not so with
President Bush,” Dr. Lovenstein said. “He has no published works or writings, which made it more difficult to arrive at an assessment. We relied more heavily on transcripts of his unscripted public speaking.”

Sure you say… We all know how much Republicans love to rewrite history. The Bush administration has been little but a series of lies and coverups since 2000, but I have to say that I wholeheartedly agree with Erich’s assessment over at pigeffer.com.

The long and short of Erich’s article is that Bush and Dick Cheney are angry about their approval ratings going down the toilet. They are so fed up by all the recent congressional critisisim over their pet war in Iraq that they are lashing out against Democrats and accusing them of “rewriting history”.

Erich, of course, asks the obvious question: What about the volumes of history the Bush administration has rewritten? The few members of his administration who can write, that is. This administration has been not only incredibly secretive, they have changed their reasoning for taking America to war three times, and attempted to bring the time-honored tradition of torture back to international affairs…

The latest Newsweek poll is showing that Bushâ€™s approval ratings are below 36%, so in an effort to appear to be presidential, Bush is swinging back at his critics by accusing them of â€œrewriting historyâ€. This is perhaps the most laughable and ironic accusation the president could have offered, considering that he has altered his reasons for going to war with Iraq three times.

At the time, he justified this action by claiming that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and was trying to acquire more. Unsurprisingly, Bush came this conclusion only a month after the attacks in New York City on 9/11. Desperately wanting to pin the attacks on Hussein to use a driver for invasion, he was unsuccessful as all evidence pointed clearly at bin Laden.

Keeping in mind that WMDâ€™s were not found in Iraq, and the people of the United States felt they were lied to, Bush changed his message. Instead of focusing on the weapons of mass destruction, Bush was able to successfully redirect the peoplesâ€™ attention to the fact that â€œSaddam is a bad guyâ€.

Not long after the Iraqi congress was formed, our reasons for the war changed once again. Now, we were â€œpromoting democracyâ€, and apparently we still are.

Erich wraps it all up by suggesting what we should be doing with our military presence in Iraq:

The best thing we can do for our troops is to pull them out of all cities, towns, and villages in Iraq and move them to the borders. From there, we can completely secure Iraq and protect the Iraqi people from foreign terrorists, such as the hundreds that are streaming in from Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.

I can’t say that I completely agree with this approach, but I do agree that the long-term hopes for a settled Middle East are bleak at best.

Of course, the second we leave, no matter how far into the future, Iraq is going to revert back to what itâ€™s always been: a nation of tribes warring with each other over religious differences. Maybe we shouldnâ€™t delay the inevitableâ€¦

Well said Erich. I hope you’re wrong, but you certainly do have history on your side.